Category Archives: rabbit people

Today’s Paffooney paffoon cartoon is a puzzler. I have this Rabbit People cartoon scene in my head with no punch line, no dialogue, and basically no idea. It just popped into my head doodle fashion, and then flowed down through my pencil and pen onto paper.

What is boy bunny Benjamin asking or saying to young buck about town Bernhopper Bunny? And what is Bernhopper’s answer?

Maybe like this;

But that’s bathroom humor. We all know the Easter Bunny lays chocolate eggs for Easter, so bunny bathroom humor gets you wondering about about chocolate chip cookies from the Easter Bunny. And that’s just gross.

Maybe it should be more like this;

Now that’s downright bad citizenship advice. Surely we can do better. And does the story have to be about the fireplug?

Okay, gotta squelch the sexual innuendo. When it comes to rabbits, that kind of humor leads to lots more rabbits. I’m not really sure how this comes out. Maybe the story should involve fat Barry Bunny who secretly prefers bananas to carrots. Or maybe it is about beautiful Bingolette Bunny who plays the bongos and writes monumentally horrible love songs in her spare time. I just can’t figure out rabbit humor! It is so frustrating! Maybe you have suggestions in the comments. (Is that a challenge to your creativity? Just a test to see if you really read this junk? Or am I just too lazy to write my own cartoons? I’ll never tell.)

Recently burger-I have been binging on drawing doodle-burgers. Burger-I know that sounds a little bit off, but that is because it was written in Burger-burger-Speak-burger . It-burger is easy to translate. Burger-I have merely added the word-burger “burger”-burger to every noun-burger and pronoun-burger as either a suffix-burger or a burger-prefix. So enjoy my recent burger-doodles and ignore my burger-burger prose-burger.

This burger-doodle was drawn in the car-burger as burger-I have recently been visiting burger-family and have not had to do all my own driving-burger. Burger-I drew it with pencil-burger and later went over it-burger with pencil-burger. It-burger was inspired by a burger-guy that burger-I happened to see walking by in Belmond-burger. It-burger is not a portrait-burger, but it-burger probably accurately reflects his inner-burger-burger-self. Burger-Iowans are like that-burger.

The burger-girl being hit on with flower-burgers by a burger-bunny-boy-burger was also drawn in the car-burger. The longer burger-I look at it-burger, the more burger-I realize what a creepy cartoon-burger it-burger really is.

Burger-burger-Speak-burger is annoyingly hard to do. And burger-I doubt that it-burger will ever be a commonly spoken language-burger. But some fool-burgers taught themselves to speak Klingon-burger, didn’t burger-they?

It pretty much goes without saying that, since I am an author of fiction, determined to be a storyteller, I spend most of my time talking to people who exist only inside my goofy old head. Sure, most of the imaginary people I create to keep me company are at least loosely based on real people that I either once knew, or still know. You can tell that about Millis, the rabbit-man, pictured here on the right, can’t you? Sure. I had a New Zealand White pet rabbit that I raised as a 4-H project. His name was Ember-eyes… because, well, yeah… red eyes. It just happens that my goofy old memory transformed him into an evolution-enhanced science experiment in my unpublished novel, The Bicycle-Wheel Genius. But he was a real person once… ’cause rabbits are people too, right?

Anita Jones, a character from my unpublished novel, Superchicken, is based on a real person too. I admit, there was a girl in my class from grades K through 6 that I secretly adored and would’ve done anything to be near, though every significant event I remember from my life that involved an encounter with her, involved red-faced embarrassment for me. That’s why I remember her as having auburn-colored hair. Charley Brown’s Little Red-Haired Girl… duh! I would’ve died sooner than tell her how I really felt, even now, but by making her into one of a multitude of imaginary people who inhabit my life, I can be so close to her that sometimes I am actually inside her mind. There’s a sort of creepy voyeurism-squared sort of thing.

Dorin Dobbs, the main human character of my published novel, Catch a Falling Star, is an imaginary character based mostly on my eldest son, though, in fact, I started writing that novel five years before he was born. Like most of the imaginary people in my life, I talk to Dorin repeatedly even when the real Dorin is half a world away in the Marine Corps. And even though the Dorin I am talking to is not the real Dorin, he is still constantly using language that is extra-salty far beyond his years, and is often defiant of my fatherly wisdom, and always argues for the exact opposite of any opinion I express. That’s just how it is to be the father of an imaginary son.

Realistically, I have to admit that even the flesh-and-blood people in my life are imaginary. No one ever actually inhabits another person’s head except through the magic of imagination. Even though I am talking to you at this moment, you are only an imaginary person to me. I don’t even know your name as I write this. And I am the same to you. You may have read my writing enough to think you know something about me… but you really only know the Mickey in your mind that I have worked at putting there with my words. And I really have no idea what that imaginary Mickey you have in your head is like. He is probably really the opposite of who I think I am.

I am, after all, married to this girl panda, Mandy Panda from the Pandalore Islands, and my three children are all Halfasian part-panda-people. Yes, this is the imaginary person who is my real-life wife. The secret is, we only ever know the imaginary people we have in our goofy little heads. We don’t know the real person behind anyone in our lives, because it is simply not possible to really know how anybody else thinks or feels, even if they write out their lengthy treatise about how all people are imaginary people. That stuff is just too goofy-dippy to be real.

I am trying to hold everything together. I have made my plans, including plans for dealing with irrational things that some people might do. And so, it is time to go visit the rabbit people.

The Rabbit people represent the people and personalities from my past, fortifying me with good memories and pleasant thoughts. I depend on my interior mental life more and more as my body breaks down and my present life is more and more limited.

The hero is a younger me, leading the way to places I have been before and ready to defend me with old truth.

But there is no such thing as a perfect sanctuary. No castle of willpower and mental toughness is ever impregnable.

A thousand things now assail me. Unpaid tax bills, surprise expenses, continued struggles with illness, and other horrible goblins of chance and bad fortune continue to hound me.

The battle is not over. I have not yet lost, though I have not won yet either.

On days when I am still recovering from life-altering blows, I often try to find new realms, alternate realities to live in. (Retreating into a fantasy world is one of the reasons she gave for leaving.) And since, as a youth in Iowa, I raised rabbits for a 4-H project, I know rabbits better than I do human people. Rabbits are people too. So, I have been walking among the rabbit people. Seriously, bunnies are better people than most human people. They are not trying to profit off you. They are not trying to get everything they can off you. They are merely there to wiggle their whiskers, sniff for food, poop, gnaw on stuff, and make more bunnies.

I often see myself as a rabbit person. In cartoon form, I am the bunny-man teacher known to the Animal Town School System as Mr. Reluctant Rabbit.

As a teacher, I am always pulling out carrots of irony and gnawing on the ends of them in front of students. If they complain that eating food in class is supposed to be against the rules, I ask them, “Do you want a carrot of irony?”

“Oh, no, thank you sir.”

“They are good for your eyesight as well as your insight. You really ought to chew on healthier things like that.”

“Oh, no sir,” they say. “We prefer Hot Cheetos.”

And so, I taught on like that… like a rabbit, fast and frumious (a Jabberwocky sort of word), and never really bit anybody. Teaching is like that. You offer the good healthy stuff to nourish their little animal minds, and they always choose the junk food instead.

And so life goes on like that. Looking to rabbit people to ease my pain and need for good, wholesome carrots of irony.

I have started on the final edit of my novel The Bicycle-Wheel Genius. One of the main characters in the book is Tommy Bircher’s pet rabbit Millis. During the course of the story about invading aliens, Secret Agent Robots from the CIA, and making friends when you need friends, Millis is turned into a rabbit-man by a lab accident. He teaches Tommy that you don’t have to be human to be a good, caring, self-sacrificing person. He also teaches him to eat his carrots and greens like a good boy should.

So, I will spend more time with the rabbit people and heal a little bit. That is what you do with the tragedy that life brings you. You spin it into whole cloth, making humor and poetry out of everything bad that happens… wrapping yourself up in a comforting blanket of lies (you can also call those fiction stories), and eating a little chicken soup on a cold day to heal your soul. (Oh, I forget, rabbits often gag on chicken soup. Let’s make that bean soup with carrot chunks.)